


Haimish

by ironicHeadtilt



Series: One Bright Day in the Middle of the Night [2]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Afterlife, Danny Phantom and Danny Fenton are separate people, Dead!Fenton, Ghost Zone, M/M, Self-cest, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-19 03:38:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8188168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironicHeadtilt/pseuds/ironicHeadtilt
Summary: A couple of dead boys stuck in the Ghost Zone.





	

Danny learned that he didn't need a lot of sleep, but that not sleeping at all made things weird. He napped on the couch for a few hours in the mid afternoon. He wandered around the town at night, knowing there was nothing that could harm him. 

He always quickly gravitated back to his own home, the empty town too much for him in large doses. He hung around his living room, staring at a TV that wouldn't work, a stack of books he'd stolen (technically not stolen) from the library that he'd thought he'd read, unchanging. Sadly, the books couldn't keep his agitated interested.

Nothing could keep his interest.

The days passed as he naturally felt they would, which was arbitrary to his subjective perception of them. He wondered if he was the ghost of this town or if the Phantom was. He had never encountered a space ruled by two separate entities in his limited experience with the Ghost Zone. Of course, it seemed they were the exception to that rule. They were the exception to a lot of rules.

The Phantom seemed to avoid him.

After a while, Danny found his capacity to drift in thought expand, his ability to sit in one place and do nothing but lose himself in minutia while the day passed or didn't pass around him swallow him in disassociation. He developed a tendency to have entire conversations with himself, conversations that bloomed into multi-person discussions with personalities he'd subconsciously created. Whether or not they mimicked people he used to know wasn't something he wanted to worry about.

Time passed.

Danny was sitting on the couch, his eyes glassy and his mind a million miles away, when he felt the Phantom drift into the living room, his presence subtly humming along Danny's senses like the static of a live TV, and settle next to him on the couch.

“Why is it you have powers and I don't?” Danny idly asked, his eyes still unfocused. The Phantom didn't look at him. That static feeling grew.

“I don't know,” he mumbled. And they sat in silence.

That started happening randomly. The Phantom would walk in with tension in his shoulders and stiffly sit next to a daydreamy Danny. Danny felt every time the Phantom walked in, like a radio signal, the white noise growing as he got closer. At first it was entirely consuming, a beacon for his untethered mind to be pulled back to with a kind of shimmery magnetism. He wasn’t sure what the Ghost Boy got from these uneventful visits, what his purpose in coming and staying was or when he felt it appropriate to leave. But he came, he stayed, he left, and, when he left, Danny was flung wide into the void galaxy of his internal monologue, lost.

Eventually, the Phantom hung around Danny more throughout the day, began casually touching him, still without much dialogue. There didn't seem to be a lot to talk about; it didn't seem to matter. When he wasn't sitting in silence or drifting aimlessly about the room, the Phantom was leafing through the abandoned library books as he rested his head on Danny's thigh. The physical contact was a strong hold on Danny’s mind, holding him to the surface of his body, thrumming agitated.

“Any reason you chose these books in particular?” The Ghost Boy had asked once, staring at the cover of some murder mystery. Danny shrugged, tapping his fingers against his knee.

“They seemed interesting at the time.”

“And they don't anymore?”

“I don't understand them.” Danny had replied.

“Why not?”

“We lack experiences,” Danny had said. Danny Phantom had looked surprised by his inclusion.

The Phantom had looked up at Danny from his lap, had held Danny's hand, the one with the skewer mark like the nail wound in the Messiah's hands, and kissed the palm. And eventually that became normal 

They were like frogs in a boiling pot. The frogs don’t notice the change in the water they're submerged in because of the gradualness of the change. They don’t jump out when the water gets too hot. They boil to death.

So their relationship changed.

The Phantom would become suddenly cold, noticed through a change in his eyes and mouth, and he’d leave the room, only to drift back in and rejoin Danny on the couch, an unaffected look on his face. This only started when the physical aspect of their relationship started, when the Ghost Boy had stopped coming in like he was ready to be attacked.

The Phantom placed exploratory kisses on Danny’s neck, his arms wrapping around Danny’s waist from where he sat. Danny let his fingers brush white hair, his face pinching in reaction to new sensations, the hairs on the back of his neck bristling from the internal white noise caused by the Phantom’s touch. The Ghost Boy had tugged at Danny's shirt, his hands pressing into the curve of Danny’s torso, his gloves smooth and cold. It was like being touched by a live wire.

Fenton grabbed the Phantom’s hand.

“Do you want me to stop?” The white-haired Danny asked in a low voice.

“No. But I think we should,” he replied, biting his lips hard to stop their rampant aching. The Phantom had settled back in his usual, comfortable spot. Danny kept hold of his hand, carefully played with his pearl hair with the other, his mind desperately trying to wander again.

\--

Danny woke up and realized it was dark outside. He didn’t usually sleep for so long. He heard footsteps downstairs, felt the itching compulsion to leave the couch, to find his anchor.

Danny climbed down the stairs, feeling different shades of Deja vu. The basement was dark, the light bouncing off the far side of the clutter a flashy green. The Phantom was sitting, more floating while sitting Indian style, in front of the open Fenton Portal, the goo-like eddies dancing in the level sheen of the entrance. Danny hesitated before walking forward, sticking his hands in his pockets and bracing himself against the oncoming static.

“Sometimes you can see for light-years,” The Ghost Boy said, “Not tonight.”

“No, I guess not.” Danny replied, sitting down next to the levitating Danny.

The Phantom reached forward, his fingertips grazing the surface. The thick current reacted to the disturbance, swirling away from his hand in gyroidal fashion. He heaved a sigh, dropping his hand and drifting onto his back, putting his hands behind his head like he was floating on the surface of a pool. Danny pathetically sat on the ground, feeling a bit out of place.

The lethargy from before surfaced. Danny didn't just want his powers back, he wanted his mind back. He wanted this facet of himself, currently bobbing next to him, back. He didn't know what that meant. He was Danny Fenton, alone. He was alone. He hadn’t always had this part of him, but he felt it, like a void in his mind, like words missing from the page of a book, that there had been a fracture inside of himself. Splinters.

“It reacts to intense emotions,” Phantom said, “I think it has something to do with the composition of whatever this green shit is. Well, I mean, obviously, it has something to do with what it is but… you okay?”

Danny shook his head.

“Do you… want to talk about it?” The Phantom asked.

Danny shrugged.

The Ghost Boy carefully faced Danny and drifted onto his lap, straddling him as he cradled his face, his thumbs brushing the edges of Danny's lips. Danny felt like he was vibrating from the contact of the Phantom’s gloved hands.

The Phantom awkwardly pressed his lips to Danny’s. Danny brought his hands up to the Phantom’s face, moving his mouth so the Phantom’s bottom lip was between his. He quickly pulled away though, lips hurting from sensation overload. The Phantom closed the space again, tongue swiping across Danny's top lip. Danny moaned, hands sliding down the Phantom's spandexed chest and pushing him away. Their lips parted again.

The Phantom sighed, inching his face forward impatiently, nose brushing nose. Danny pressed a distracted kiss to the offered lips then again pushed him away. The Phantom sat back, letting his hands rest on Danny's ribs.

Danny knew this boy was him. He knew they were essentially the same person, had the same bodies. He studied the Ghost Boy, who was appraising his torso, a separate person with his knees on either side of Danny’s legs and his hands slowly creeping Danny's shirt over his chest, with undeniably the same face, the same hands, and he was forced into the truth of the situation. This was practically masterbation.

He shouldn't be attracted to himself. And yet, here he was. Here they both were. And it didn't feel like he was kissing himself.

He gently took the hands of the boy on top of him, uncurling the fingers from his shirt which was pushed up to his waist. The Phantom avoided his eyes, like he'd been caught, his mouth a hard line. Danny brought the Ghost Boy's gloved hands to his lips. His mouth tingled, but not nearly as unbearably as when they were pressed to the Phantom’s lips.

“I hate to break it to you, but we have to slow down. I have to… get used to…” He leaned forward, kissing the edge of the Phantom’s mouth quickly. He pulled away with his face scrunched. “Contact edges on painful.”

The Phantom looked vaguely horrified, gliding upwards, pulling his hands from Danny’s grasp and tucking them against his own chest, until he wasn't touching Danny in any way.

“Holy shit, seriously?” he said from above him.

“Well… I mean, it's, like, shocking. Literally?” Danny said, biting his lower lip. “It's, just, uncomfortable. Like I'm kissing an atom smasher. My hair stands on end.”

The Ghost Boy wet his lips before landing next to Danny, noticeably avoiding contact. Danny realized this was probably the most lively, no pun intended, they’d both been since he'd gotten there. Since he'd died. Danny stared back into the portal, remembering a very different situation in the portal room, what felt like years ago, what might’ve been years ago, for what Danny knew. He ran a distracted thumb across the small scar on his palm. The Phantom from that memory had seemed so distant and weird.

“Sorry about that,” Phantom murmured, still stationary on the floor. “You were having a moment and I just- I didn’t help.”

Danny Fenton tried to rest his head on the Phantom’s shoulder. He felt the Ghost Boy tense under him. It felt like they were back to square one.

“I can’t help myself,” Danny replied, “I don’t expect you to.”

The Phantom kept very still. Danny couldn’t see his expression. Danny tried to take his hand. The Phantom absently pulled it away.

“Are we the same person? Were we ever?” The Phantom asked, looking down at his gloved hands.

“I don't know,” Danny pathetically confessed.

“But I'm not.” The Phantom said in a low voice. “I'm obviously not the same as you. Why are you so human? Why am I not?”

“I still see myself as human,” Danny offered as explanation. He felt the Ghost Boy shudder.

“I'm supposed to see myself as human?” The Phantom said with forced levity.

“I'm being serious.”

“So am I.” Danny kept his head ducked onto the Phantom's shoulder like a chided child. “We’re dead, Danny. Dead. I stopped feeling human the very moment I died.”

“I know we're dead. I'm dead. I get it-”

“No, you clearly don't.” The Phantom said sternly. He pulled himself free of Danny, left through the ceiling. Danny was stuck on the floor, staring at the portal and chewing on his lips.

\--

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to read more, please subscribe to the work. <33


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